Fun Friday / Staff Picks

This is not only the final Friday of the year, but our final blog post. It’s the season of giving, so we’d like to leave you with some of our favourite books and movies for you to discover. You can still find us on Facebook and Twitter, as well as our website, or come in any time. For now, have a very happy holiday. We’ll see you in 2013!

Barb: Kristen Hannah’s Home Front is a story of love, loss, heroism, honor and ultimately, hope.  Have a tissue handy. A nice quick read.

Anne has two reviews. Radio Rebel – Two thumbs up, good teen movie.  She also read Rick Mercer’s A Nation Worth Ranting About. “A book containing Rick Mercer’s political rants from his show the Rick Mercer Report.  No topic is off limits.  He’s blunt, funny and in most cases always right.   Nothing better than Newfoundland wit. I nominate Rick Mercer for Prime Minister!”

Faith was fascinated by the film The Island President. Chronicling the first year in office of the first democratically-elected president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, the movie follows Nasheed as he fights for his country’s survival. Made up of 1200 islands in the Indian Ocean, the Maldives would be decimated by even minor changes in sea level caused by global warming. It closes with an extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at the 2009 Copenhagen UN Climate Change Conference.

Cathy recommends  Almost Heaven by Chris Fabry. One of the best Christian novels that I have read for quite awhile, with a refreshingly different plot. There are actually two stories occurring in this book, both involving the ongoing battle between good and evil.

Shelley likes Jodi Picoult’s Lone Wolf.  A story about a family having to choose whether or not to terminate life support for one of its members  –  the father that was gravely injured in a car crash.  He was an internationally known biologist that both studied and lived in the wild with wolves,  preferring  that life to the one with his own family.  It’s an interesting, fast-paced novel about what makes a family, and what tears it apart.

Catherine says: “Mother: Caring for 7 Billion is a short documentary of about an hour, but nicely pulls together a lot of angles on the population issue.  It’s not a clear cut topic by any means so it’s good to see somebody making effort to grapple with this challenge.  Without giving too much away, suffice it to say I’m really looking forward to reading the new book, Overdressed, by Elizabeth Cline.  It’s all a tangled web we weave.”

Kim watched Oranges and Sunshine.  It is a great movie drama based on the true story of Margaret Humphreys (played by Emily Watson), a Social Worker in England who begins to help adults who were shipped away as young children from England to Australia to live in care homes.   The children were generally forced into hard labour and were often both physically and sexually abused.  It is a sad story but very well acted and is very compelling.